S1 E18 - Hotels vs Villas: Pros and cons to help you choose the perfect venue

And as I was walking out of my hotel in my wedding dress to the car, I walked past the swimming pool and someone yelled out, "Don't do it!" Oh no! I wish I listened to them. If something goes wrong, you don't have a handful of staff. You've got us. And like, in the nicest way, babe, it's like, I'm not a security guard. That's not my job. Your guests are fighting, you sort it out. Okay? I'm sorry, that's not my job.

Yeah.

Like, no, that is in no way, shape or form is it my job to be breaking up your fights. And I think if you're listening to this, please, like, just work with the wedding planners. Like, we're not trying to make make your life more difficult. But simple things are going to another wedding.

And sometimes they're just very simple questions and it takes weeks to get back to us.

On the wedding day, it's like, hey, you filled up a chapel full of chairs that I'm not using. You knew I was hiring chairs, can we get rid of them?

Yeah.

No one moves. And it's like, my chairs are here, I want to load them in, can you get rid of them? And it's like an hour and a half and you're still— can you move the chairs for me?

Yeah.

Like, I don't know where they go, they don't belong to me, can you bring your staff and get rid of them? So those are the kind of painful things that happen. Hi and welcome back to another episode of Bali Weddings Unveiled. I'm Tristan, I'm Britta, and today we are going to be ticking off a topic about basically choosing your wedding venue and how to decide between a hotel versus a villa, which I guess is your main kind of options. So stay tuned, we're going to be ticking off some questions, how to kind of decide and what the differences are between the two. So before we get started, our last episode, our beautiful flowers today are from Sarita Florist. Um, Arty made this beautiful arrangement for us. He's actually a wedding stylist. Stylist, yeah, local stylist, local wedding stylist. But we also do work with him sometimes just to work on our floristry as well, and we take over the rest of the styling. So thank you, Arty, for the beautiful flowers today. Let me just have a sneaky sip of my drink.

That is a soda water.

It is definitely not a soda water. I've just come off two back-to-back events, which means I'm running on about 10 hours of sleep in a couple of days. And I did mean to sleep in this morning, and then I realized Christian had school, got home from the wedding at like 1:30, got up for school at 6:30, sent him out the door. He came back an hour later because there's no school.

There's no school.

I could have been sleeping, but instead I am here. It is fine.

It's fine.

All right, so let's kick it off. Hotel versus villa. Let's I mean, pretty basic question. I'm sure everybody at home knows what a hotel is. They know what a villa is.

Hotel obviously is a hotel where you can stay, where other people will also be staying. So it's not private.

Yep. So you've got options of having your wedding at a hotel. That's a very popular option here. Or the other option you've got is going to be a private villa, which is basically like, I guess, a house that you hire for a couple of days, a week, or however long, and you can host your wedding there. The third option that we won't really go into too much today is also going to be places like private event spaces, but there's only a couple in Bali, so you don't have a lot of choice. So today we're just going to be covering off how to choose what's best for you. Britta, my little brain is tired today.

Where do we kick off?

Like, what are the, I guess, the benefits of having a hotel wedding over a villa wedding? Do you want to do the other way around?

Because you like villas.

Tell me the benefits. Let's have a little fight. All right. You can be team villas. I'll be team hotels. Ready? 3, 2, 1. Tell me the best reason to get married in a villa.

Villa. I would I'd probably say just because it's private.

We're not okay today. I'm a team hotel. Oh, I'm joking, I'm gonna let you have your minute.

So villa, it's private, um, you're not getting random guests walking straight through your ceremony in their Speedos watching your ceremony. No, you, you've got a private area, usually a nice little garden out the front that you can probably do welcome at. And then also I would probably say another big one is curfew, honestly. Um, curfew, that depending on where you are on the island, it's either going to be 11 or midnight, or sometimes depending on the venue, again, if they've got a rave cave, um, then you can probably go till like 2 or 3 AM.

Only a couple of venues that you can really go later though. Yeah, I was having a giggle before because when you said no one walking around the hotel— when I got married in Bali all those many moons ago. I just remember I did get married at a hotel, but I stayed at a different hotel.

Yeah.

And as I was walking out of my hotel in my wedding dress to the car, I walked past the swimming pool and someone yelled out, don't do it! No, no. I wish I listened to them. So wheezing. What is that laugh? So yeah, you guys obviously do have the guess. But so you told me the pros of villas. I'm going to tell you the pros of a hotel for me as a wedding planner. Hotel finish at 10, I get to be in bed by 10:30, 11.

That is the pro of being a wedding planner. Okay, but on a serious note, put it into the perspective of like your bride and groom.

Yeah, so for your bride and groom, if you are more budget conscious, a hotel is by far the best option for you. And the reason being is you're only going to probably get depending on the hotel, a much smaller event hire fee.

Yeah.

So hotels won't say you must stay here for 3 days or 5 days and, you know, with all of your guests, you must stay here to have the wedding here. It's not the way it works. They will charge you a venue hire fee depending on the hotel and the area. The price is going to fluctuate. I mean, I think the cheapest hotel we work out is $500. Most expensive, you're looking at like Mooglia, Kempinski, Ayana, like upwards of $6,000, $7,000, $10,000 depending on the space that you're looking at. Another thing as well, you don't typically have minimum spends on food and beverage. So if you go into a villa, I've just got one at the moment coming up, um, we started with 40 guests, we now have 12. We still have to pay for a minimum of 30 guests because the catering company has that requirement.

That's similar to what I've got coming up as well.

In a hotel, you don't have that because they are used— they've got restaurants on site, they've got everything on site, they're used to catering to small numbers. So you don't really have minimum spends. A lot of hotels will also have equipment that you can use which can save you money. So they'll already have tables, they'll already have chairs, some of them have sound systems. Yeah, Nusa Dua Beach Hotel already has a dance floor. I mean, we get a small fee for it, so you can save a lot of money that way as well. Um, one of my personal favorites at the moment, because we're having wet summer, hotels always have a backup option. Yeah, if you are getting married in a villa right now and it is raining, you have two options really. One is the rain stopper, who we've spoken about so many times. Two is a marquee. And a marquee is going to start at $2,000 and go up from there. Yeah. And not every venue can do a marquee. I just had this massive issue at a wedding last month. Was it last month? Yeah. Wanted to do a marquee, wasn't physically possible at the villa. Yeah. So we got the rain stopper and we just hoped for the best. And luckily, like, it stayed nice at our wedding that day. But was it raining at your wedding where you were? No, no, that wasn't the BBG day where I was talking to you on the walkie-talkie.

No, Sissy.

Says, hey, that's right. Yeah. So hotels always have a backup option. You can go into a restaurant, you can go into a ballroom. So again, not having to fork out that extra money. And my personal favorite is you can stay with all of your guests without being on top of each other. You also have a lot of things to do inside a hotel. You've got restaurants, you've got bars. Like, if you get bored at any time of the day, you can just duck down to the swimming pool, you can go for a— like, there's so much to do inside of a hotel. So they both definitely do have their benefits. Budget's going to be a big thing. I probably would say though, if you do have large numbers, I would try to steer towards a villa just because catering becomes a lot more affordable in that kind of regards. I mean, we'll go through the cons list in a minute.

I feel like the spacing at hotels— like, just me thinking off the top of my head right now, actually, no, Conrad's got a really big lawn. Um, but I would say, yeah, Holiday Inn. Um, but probably if you're going to Mandira or Noosa Dua Beach Hotel, like, it's not a massive space.

Yeah.

And Mandira, they've got a bigger lawn that you can use. I had a wedding there last year. We had about 110 guests.

Yeah.

But you had to use the lawn that was kind of situated next to the swimming pool, but very close to the, to the road on one side. Even that grass, very muddy as well.

Yeah. So there's definitely a lot of perks to both. I mean, hotels, obviously you've already got the facilities. Villas, It's a blank slate, really. Yeah, you can go into a villa and you can bring in any supplier you want. You're not restricted there. Later curfews. Hotels, you are typically going to have a 10 PM curfew, which for a lot of people is just going to be straight out of no. They do have ballrooms, so you can definitely have an after-party inside the ballroom at a lot of them. However, you then need to set up more equipment. You need to have another sound system. You need to pay for a minimum spend on the bar and go into those rooms. What are some, let's say, cons of the villas?

Cons of villas: backup option, number one. Yeah, there's not really any backup options. I mean, the wedding is at Stone Villas and we didn't really have a backup option.

Well, we did, and they just chose not to take it.

Yeah, um, need a marquee obviously if it looks like it's gonna rain.

Um, cons: less amenities, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, all your guests— yeah, I mean, all your guests can't stay there. Depending on the number of rooms, of course, there's a lot of people that would need to travel in, so you'd need to be looking at transport, which is an additional cost if you want to cover that or if you want your guests to cover it themselves. Yeah, Two different options there. I like the villas because a lot of the times there's many different spaces that you can use.

No, no, no, don't come back in. And just throw me another good thing. We're attacking yours now. I don't really know what to attack. I just love a villa. You do love it. I love a villa as well, but someone has to play advocate for the hotels. I did think of something before though about the villas. Cons?

Sometimes the toilets—

oh, the toilets are so different.

Sometimes there's villas that don't have communal toilets, so you're going into a bedroom.

Yeah, so last night I had a wedding, we had 50 guests, and there was only one toilet for the public inside that villa. And that was one toilet, not like two, it was one. And so there was a lineup, so we had to ask one of the guests if they'd be okay sharing their room and opening up a room and going in and out, so you can lose a little bit of your privacy. Oh, that's the other thing. I am very— I love my family and I love my friends, but I'm the kind of person that if, if I was to get married again, I would want my privacy on my wedding night. And in a villa, you don't get that. I mean, you've got a private room, but do you really want to be next door to mum and dad who are in the next room over? Whereas in a hotel, I guess you still don't have that, but you're not going to have your family right next door when you might be doing wedding night things.

No, if you're even up for that. Couples are so exhausted after a wedding day, I've found.

You know how we were talking about stories the other day and we're like, when can we talk about it? Be like, we can talk about it in a couple of years because by then the couple won't know it's about them or their guests. So I can talk about this one because it was years ago.

Yeah.

I had a couple, I love them. Like their wedding video to date is still probably one of my absolute favorites and very sweet couple, very religious. I walked into the prep room at the hotel on the day Hi babe, how you going? She goes, I'm gonna have sex tonight. And I was like— and I didn't know because I didn't probe— that they were both virgins. Oh, because they were saving themselves. And I will never forget at the end of the night, like, I was collecting up items to drop off to her room for, like, the guest book and this and that. And she wanted me to take it back earlier so that when they went back to the room, it was just like that was their time.

Yeah.

And as she handed me her guest book and the things she wanted to take me back, she goes, Tristan, my underwear in between there. It was really uncomfortable. So I took it off and as straight-faced as I could, I leaned there. I was like, babe, at the end of the night when we do your tunnel out, I just want you to whisper in his ear, I'm not wearing any underwear. Because that's the time you're about to go back to the room. Like, that's going to make his night. She's like, really? And I was like, yep. And so anyway, I dropped her stuff off the room and I'll never forget, we made this beautiful tunnel for them to leave out of. And I saw her just as she was walking out whisper in his ear and his whole face just went, as they were walking out and I was just like in hysterics laughing. But probably the best thing after that is one of the uncles came over and he goes, oh Tristan, they forgot this, I'm just going to drop it off in the room. I was like, no, you're not, you're not going anywhere near their room.

Steer clear of that room.

Like in a hotel, I guess you don't care as much because you don't know who your neighbors are. Like it's not a big whoop-de-doo. If my mum and dad were in the room next to me, I would be very mindful about what I was doing on the wedding night. Yeah.

I mean, in that case, I, I would probably book a bigger villa.

So some of the villas that I actually do really like for this reason is I actually really love Latitude. Yeah, because they've got that private suite up the top that's completely separate from all the other bedrooms, so it's like being in your own separate space. Um, I also quite like that Stone. They've got that upstairs bedroom that is also very separate from the rest of them. So there are a couple of villas, but most of them you are going to be side by side.

I would say Pandawa Cliff Estate as well. That's pretty like that main bedroom kind of comes off on a wing. Yeah, as well.

So there's definitely villas. But the other thing as well, like, I wake up the day after my wedding in my brain, in my fake wedding, and I'm like, I just want to sit by the pool with my husband. But then like my best friend's there trying to talk to me, and this— like, you don't get the privacy.

Yeah.

Of being left alone. Because if you're in a hotel, no one's going to come up and talk to you. No one wants to hear about your night and tell you all the gossip and chitchat to you. They leave you alone. Yeah. So I guess you kind of do lose that aspect. In that regards. So let's, let's kind of deep dive a little bit bigger into this because we do have— like, I honestly, like, me hands down, I'm a villa girl through and through, but that's from a wedding planning perspective. So I want to dive into, from a wedding planning perspective, why we personally love a villa more than a hotel. And I think the key thing it comes down to is staffing and our control over the day.

Oh yeah.

If we go into a hotel, the hotels have their policies, they have their staff. You don't get any selection. Like, I don't get to choose the waiters, I don't get to choose the catering, I don't get choose the food. And it was like— and there's so many times that you go into a hotel and we'll be messaging on our group chat and it's like, oh, hotel wedding. And we all get it. But what you don't get behind the scenes is, let's say Drunken Love— we talk about them quite regularly, our bar company.

Yep.

That we just adore. Simple things. I don't have to tell them to put their soft drinks on ice. They just do it. They just do it. In a hotel, the bar's not set up at 2 o'clock, the guests are arriving at 3. I have no cold drinks, and I can ask them 4, 5, 6, 7 times and it's still not getting done. And then I'm escalating to a manager.

And I think it also comes down to level of English as well. Yeah, a lot of the hotel staff, they— most of them that I found, they don't really speak English apart from the head coordinator that's like from the hotel. Because say we talk to just one main person Yeah, but then it's freelancers.

Yeah. And you know, you go to the hotel and you're like, no, but everyone's English is fantastic. Those people in the restaurant are not working your wedding because they're going to still be at the restaurant. They bring in special staff for those events. And even little things like, you know, how many times have we asked a hotel for a bed sheet to replace a tablecloth? Because you look at the tablecloths and they're dirty or they've got holes in them, and the standards inside there, it's like, well, we're just a hotel. Yeah, there's not that level.

Sometimes they're bringing out different tablecloths, like some have like flowers, flowers and patterns on it, but it's all white, obviously. But then you've got another tablecloth that is just pure white. I'm like, can we get another white tablecloth, like, without any patterns on it?

Yeah. So I think I, I love a villa because I get a lot more control over the staff and the team that I'm going to be working with on the day. And as we've discussed in so many episodes, like, the team on the wedding day are everything. We're obviously in control, but it's a lot harder to control than a hotel because they've got their own staff and they're not really ours. And the hotel, like, The staff are wonderful, but they don't care if we don't come back. Whereas all the little suppliers we work with for catering and this and that, they want that repeat business. Whereas with the hotel, they're like, well, we've already got all the income from this and a wedding's just like extra money for us.

Yeah.

So the level of service, I mean, this is not everywhere, but definitely the level of service you're not going to get the same in a hotel is what you're going to get at a villa where we get to handpick your team of wedding suppliers. Yeah. Also, another thing as well, I know one particular hotel— I think we've only ever done 2 weddings there. I hate working there because they are a factory line. They've got 7 or 8 different wedding venues inside the hotel. They don't care about our weddings. They're like, well, we've got one here happening at 2 o'clock, one here at 3 o'clock, and one at 4 o'clock. And we literally had a wedding years ago, they booked in, 2 weeks later something happened, the couple broke up, wouldn't refund us. We paid a $10,000 deposit, would not give us any money back. But there's no kind of compassion there because, yeah, well, the money's out now, ours now. And again, they don't care if we don't come back because they've already got the money.

Wow. Yeah.

In saying that, a lot of amazing hotels that we do work at, and they're absolutely beautiful. We've definitely got our favorite for sure.

I think what I mentioned before, Mandira and, um, Nusa Dua Beach Hotel, like, just love them. I think I love Mandira for that, um, smaller private garden that they've got out the back there, like the rice paddy, is that what they call it?

I really like the staff there as well. Staff there are wonderful. So accommodating. Yep, they are so wonderful to work with.

Ria's there just all day if we ever need anything.

And little Jeffrey, when he's there as well, like, I love him. And I think I love him as well because I've known him such a long time. When the hotel retain their staff, I think that's a really good sign that you're going to a good place. And Noosa Door Beach Hotel, absolutely gorgeous beachfront. The staff there are so flexible. Yeah, I mean, like, what— there's not a lot of venues that they'll let us bring in all of our own drinks if we want to. And just pay corkage fees that aren't excessive.

And I, I would probably say that's a con to a hotel. Drinks packages. I think we touched on that before in like food and beverage catering.

Yeah. So I mean, there's definitely going to be a lot of pros and cons on both sides. I think the biggest thing it's going to come down to is your budget. Budget. And the kind of setting you want. If you've got a lot of children and you're family orientated, I think a hotel is going to be better for you because there's more facilities on site for the families to do. There's a lot more close by. The villas are going to be a lot more rural.

Usually like kids clubs. For kids as well.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's swimming pools and there's activities and there's all sorts of things for people to go and do. Yeah, we're quite tired today, guys, so excuse our little pauses. We had like this whole— we actually said we needed cue cards.

Yeah, I need cue cards.

I hate seeing cue cards or like people reading off paper. And what we've been doing is being quite organic, but we are in the midst of peak season. Yeah, Britta had a wedding on What day are we? I don't even know what day I was out at weddings.

Wednesday, Friday, Saturday.

Monday, actually. It's Monday.

Yeah, yeah.

Time doesn't exist in Bali.

You had Wednesday, I had Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday.

Wednesday, then I flew to Perth and back on Friday. Yeah, that wedding. So we're running on very little sleep while trying to talk about these topics, but we want to keep, we want to keep our content fresh for you and coming off, you know, like real experience. So yeah. In the last week I have done weddings. I did one wedding at a, I guess you'd call it a hotel, Bali Beach Club. Yeah, it's a hotel resort villa, but it's a bit of a different one because it is like a buyout type place. We brought out the entire resort, we had the entire place. There's only 50, 60 rooms.

Yeah.

Um, beautiful, but again, in-house catering. But honestly, the team there are fantastic to work with. I actually really enjoy them. And we got a late curfew, midnight, because we brought out the whole venue.

Yep. And then I really love BBG. Haven't worked at, um, Glamp Noosa yet, but we've got our first wedding there on Wednesday actually.

I'm really excited. So we had our little stay out there the other week and we were so excited. We're like, we're gonna get some sun.

We've stayed there twice now.

Yeah, and it rained the whole, the whole time we were there. We didn't get to see any sunshine, but that's fine. It's a beautiful venue. Um, again, it's like a buyout situation, so you take the entire resort. They do have a later curfew. Yanti's got that wedding coming up and we've got a 2-hour curfew.

Yeah, so once you hit 11 you can move inside into their, um, dining— what is it, restaurant?

Yeah, restaurant.

Words that aren't coming out. Um, yeah, you can go into their restaurant and you can go up until whatever time you want. Yeah, I'm pretty sure— don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure that's what I spoke about with them at my last meeting.

Yeah, so this was another thing that just popped into my mind. I don't know why this randomly came into there as well. But I guess another perk of having a hotel wedding or in places like that is you've already got all the staff on site, but it also means that you have additional staff that you might not ever know you need.

Yeah.

So one of the key things I'm thinking of is security. Now, security is not something that we ever put in a quote for you on your wedding. Like, it's just not something we quote. No. The reality is security is probably a very good idea to have on your weddings. And from our perspective now, I actually make it compulsory. We put security guard on most of our weddings just for our team, and that's due to trauma. Yeah. Um, but I had an incident— I've had incidents over the years where I've had to remove guests from weddings either because they weren't invited or they were too drunk or there were fights and things. When you go into a hotel, you've already got that security and that protection there. If you're in a villa, you don't— if something goes wrong, you don't have a handful of staff. You've got us. And like, in the nicest way, babe, it's like, I'm not a security guard. That's not my job. Your guests are fighting, you sort it out.

Okay, it's very scary when we are in the middle of a punch-on, which has happened. Um, it's very traumatic, it's very confronting, and it's like, oh my God, like, it's someone's wedding. Like, don't—

I'm a badass boss bitch, but guys, I'm just a girl.

I'm literally just a girl.

Please don't ask me to break up fights with men.

No, and especially big men, like, they're towering over us and they're built, you know.

So from a Bali Brides perspective, I did make it compulsory for our entire team now that when we work at a villa, you must— the company pays for it, but in some instances, if I think the guests need it, I'll make them pay for it as well, extra. But we have our own security guard because we did have an incident, yeah, where I had a guest try and punch me. And this was a big man, and it was because I cut him off in the bar because he would— he'd been warned multiple times about doing something. He started a fight and I cut him off the bar, from the bar, and then he started a fight and I had to escort him to the venue. We had no security and he tried to take swing at me. And like, I'm sorry, that's not my job. Yeah, like, no, that is in no way, shape, or form is it my job to be breaking up your fights. And I think once you hit a certain time in the night, like, our clients forget that we're a wedding planner. Yeah, like, the amount of times I've been approached on the night, hey, can you go do this? And I'm like, not actually my, my job at all. Yeah, like, can you go fetch me towels from the villa? Like, Yeah, that's your villa staff.

I think it's also really important to point out, um, say Wonderland. Yeah, you go in there in the morning, you start to get ready, you do all your hair and makeup, you get changed, you're steaming everything, um, your bags and clothes and just all your belongings are all over those prep rooms. It's not our job to clean it up. I'm sorry, at the end of the night.

Also, so I had a guest arrive at a wedding not yesterday, day before Actually, this happens regularly. Walks in, hey, where can I leave my bag? And I was like, I don't know. Like, like, again, like, yeah, I'm not a locker service. Like, you're not staying here. Like, where you leave the bags up to you. I'm not in charge of that. If you're gonna leave it on the floor, I take no responsibility.

No.

Or even the other day, you know, we had guests rock up, we arranged the buses for them, but then they left early. Like it was our fault, but it wasn't our fault. Like, I just booked the buses. It's not my fault you left without guests.

There was captains there for a reason.

Yeah, so I think there's a lot of perks of having your wedding in a hotel because you do get a fully staffed function venue that is used to dealing with the public and with guests. And you know, if you want to get a taxi out of the night, go to reception, order you a taxi.

Yeah, whereas if you're in the middle of nowhere, it's quite hard to get a taxi out of there. I would probably say if you're out Villaventus, BBG way, there is taxi mafia that they've got there. And you're better off going to the front and asking for one of their local drivers because online taxis, just, I would not even attempt, honestly.

There's been so many issues in the past. So I guess the hotels definitely do have their perks. I mean, we don't love working at them, but we do because there is the perks of, you know, finishing early and this and that. From a wedding planning perspective, that does become very frustrating when we lose control over aspects or no, you can't change that menu item, but I'm sure you can. You can just take that. No, we can't. Like, there's just not as much flexibility. Yeah, yeah. So hotels obviously come fully, fully staffed. Villa does not. Um, let's talk about villas and the costings of them because I think this is going to be a massive thing which people don't realize when you're trying to budget out your wedding. And if you're going to book a villa, it's really important to tell your wedding planner or budget— keep this in mind— are you paying for all of your guests' accommodation or are they paying for it? If you book out a villa that's 5 bedrooms Are you paying for every single bedroom or are your guests going to contribute? Because that needs to be factored into your budget. If you're planning on covering all of it, budget goes down.

That is a massive cost.

But if all of your guests are contributing, then obviously you've got more money to play with. And this is a very— some people pay for everything, some people don't. But if you got married in a hotel, you'd pay for your room and that's it. Yep. So I think that's something really important to factor in as well. What's the kind of minimum stay? In a villa? Depends on the season, I guess.

Depends on the season, but minimum would be 2 to 2, 2 nights probably. In the peak season, it's probably 2 nights, and then off-season maybe more 3 nights.

I think Vaidus is probably the only venue that I know that does a 2-night. Yeah, most of them are going to be 3. I think even the peak season, most of them are 5.

Yeah, Glamp Noosa, I think we've got a 2-night.

The next one is BBG Vaidus, and that's because they are trying to do the turnover and do as many weddings possible. Most of the other ones, they want minimum 3. Um, when you go into a villa, this is a massive issue we've had in time with people who only do a 2-night buyout. It's really important that you book the villa the day before the wedding. Oh my God, if you were checking on on the day of the wedding, you don't get access until 2 or 3 PM. And this is a big thing as well, the villas. You've got to have it a day before because I, as your wedding planner, need access to your villa from 9, 10 AM in the morning.

Yep.

Because that's what time I need to start setting your lighting up. That's what time the furniture needs to load in. We need a full day to set your villa up. And if you don't have access till 2 PM, you're probably going to have a very basic ceremony. You're going to have the most basic of light. Like, you're not going to be able to do much styling-wise.

Lighting would have to be the big one there. If you, uh, fairy lights. Well, I did, but in one area of Villa Vadas, we got in at 12.

But that's not common.

That's not common.

Yeah.

I had to fight for that. Um, but it's because when you're checking in that day, you've typically got people checking out that morning, so— and we can't get in there till midday. Yeah, latest.

So I guess access as well. In a hotel, we can access the hotel from whatever time we need to, whereas with the villa, you actually need to book it the day before. So you probably look at a minimum of 3-night stay, plus on top of that you have an event fee. No one really knows what an event fee is. It like when we quote, we have to quote you for 3 nights plus the event fee. The event fee depends on the venue, but it's going to be equivalent to a 1-night stay.

And banjar fees?

And banjar fees. So event fees basically cover the wear and tear of the villa. So when we do— when you just stay at a villa, you know, you're going to use all the facilities, that's normal. When we do an event, we're going to put a dancer on the grass, we're probably going to ruin the grass dancing on it. We're going to have 50 people, 60 people, 100 people tramping all over it, using the bathrooms, using too much toilet paper, dirtying it. So The event fee basically covers the wear and tear of the villa to maintain it to an event standard.

Yep.

Banjar fees equivalent to a local council. We've kind of touched on that a few times. We're disturbing the peace of the neighborhood. They put them out the front. I actually had the banjar come into my wedding last night. Been a while since that happened. But the banjar are also in charge of like noise control for the area. So if they get too many complaints, they come in and they tell you to turn the music down.

Yeah.

I just completely lost my train of thought on that. So event fees, banjar fees. There's also going to be additional fees for things like recovery days. If you're going to do multiple events in a villa, you have to pay additional fees for that. So I think you've just had this recently. Client was like, we want to do an additional event. Great. Well, there's going to be an event fee and I'm going to be on site.

Yeah.

So our extra event fee is $10 million for us to go out and run the day.

For us to go out there, run the day, make sure everything's all good. Because typically if you're having like a full recovery day, you've probably got extra furniture going in. Sometimes you got a DJ going in, we gotta do the sound, and we gotta make sure, say if it's at a private venue, a generator to run that sound.

And someone needs to be there to coordinate all the vendors. So if you want to do multiple day events, you've got to factor in that there are going to be multiple day charges. Whereas again, in a hotel, you don't really get that. If you all want to hang out by the pool the next day, you just wake up and you go to the pool and away you go. You will grab a drink from the swim-up bar, no minimum spends, none of that sort of jazz.

I think it's important to note as well, if you are at a villa and you are wanting to do another event Typically for it to be classed as another event, it's got to be over the people that are staying in-house.

Yeah. So it's going to vary depending on the villa. So some of them, it's if you're over 50% of the capacity of the villa, let's say this villa sleeps 10.

Yeah.

And you've got 15 people, they're going to classify that as a day 2 event and they're going to charge you an event fee. Yeah. So it's not like you can just say to all of your guests, hey, come over for a swim at the villa next day. They don't actually allow you to do that. And there's a variety of reasons why. The other thing as well, when you're doing an event in a villa, you might be like, oh well, they've already got all the glassware in the kitchen, we're going to use that for your event. You're actually not allowed to use any of the stuff in the villa for your event. So no, we're talking about— for hotels have chairs and tables and cutlery. If you go into a villa, we can't touch any of that stuff. That's not for your event, that is purely for your stay, not as part of the event.

Yeah, yeah.

What are you looking at? I don't know, there was noises. It's like, is the roof about to cave in? We're getting a little bit delirious at this time of day. Um, now I guess the other thing to discuss is capacities.

Yep.

If you've got an event for more than 150 people, villas are out. Yeah, there is no villa in Bali that can fit that amount of people. Actually, Stone probably can, Pandawa.

Yep. Um, I think you would also need to look at if you're wanting to do cocktail style as well.

Yeah, so villas are going to have a limit, whereas hotels have obviously big grass areas and things. So yeah, if you do have a massive amount of guests, you're probably going to be looking at either a private event space or you're going to be looking at a hotel because they just, they have the capacity. I think a lot of the venues we work at, like 100 people is going to be quite squishy, a lot of them. Yeah, we're on a really good run today with that, aren't we?

I had it in my brain and then it went whoosh, whoosh.

I'm just thinking about all the hotel weddings that we've kind of done. Yeah, the last— I guess the other thing with the hotel, this is a perk, We always ask your dietaries and things, right? Vegans, this, that. If someone all of a sudden goes, oops, I'm vegan, or this or that, or I only eat fish— hotels have kitchens and like we can rustle up food from somewhere else. When you were doing a catered event inside a villa, they don't bring other ingredients outside of your wedding menu.

Yeah, quite restricted. And we get that all the time. It's like, oh, I actually don't eat fish. I'm like, okay, well, we had an event a few years ago, remember?

And like, this is something that really does my head in as a wedding planner, and I'm sure that other people feel the same if they're in the industry. We get the blame for everything. Oh yeah, even if it's not our fault. So we had a parent come up to us at a wedding and be like, where's the kids' meals? The kids' meals haven't been served. And I was like, We always serve the kids' meals first. It's like an hour and a half into the event, surely they've been served. So I go to the kitchen, kitchen tells me it's served. I go back to it, they've already been fed. No, they haven't. So I go back again, go to the owner of the business, Tristan, they've already been fed and they've had their desserts. I go back to the mum again, yes, they have been fed. That one's 16, he only got XYZ. And I was like, that was the kids' meal that was ordered. Well, that's not enough for him. And she started yelling at me and I'm like, I didn't order the meal for him. Like I literally said, who needs a kids' meal?

Like this is all pre-organized stuff.

The bride and the groom ordered the meals, not me. Like You know, so, and then the problem is, is like, obviously they've been served a kids meal, which is meant for like, you know, kids meals. I'd say like under the age of 8, it's pretty good for a kids meal.

Yeah.

Christian, my son's 9, and some places he'll have a kids meal if he's not overly hungry, and that's fine for him. But if he's had lunch at 12 and we're going out for dinner at 7, he needs like an adult meal now. And he won't probably eat all of it.

Yeah.

But he needs a bigger portion because he's not a 5-year-old anymore that's happy with 3 chicken nuggets and a handful of chips. So in instances like that as well, if I was at the venue that I was at at that time, they would complain, the 16-year-old's still hungry, doesn't want the adult meals, and obviously everyone's already been served by now, they want more food. Yeah, I didn't have more food. It was a fully catered event. We'd catered in for everyone. I mean, there was extra meals just in case, you know, an extra adult showed up. Like, there's always going to be a couple of things, but nothing suitable for a child. So in that case, I literally ordered McDonald's.

Tristan.

Yeah. Um, in a hotel, we could have just gone to the restaurant and been like, hey, let's get another round of french fries or some rice or whatever it needed to be. So there's definitely going to be things that are advantage— advantageous? What's the word? Uh, oh geez, you don't know it. Is that even a word? I just made up a word. I'm trying to think of what—

advantages.

Advantages. It's gonna be— yes. Oh my gosh, I feel so stupid right now. There's definitely advantages of having your wedding in a hotel. I mean, I feel like we're picking on them, but the more I think about it, I'm like, it's actually really good.

I would probably say, just going back to how many people you can fit in certain spaces, if you are having a lot of guests and they all, and they all come, um, which has happened to one of my upcoming weddings actually, there we've got Taman Bhagawan, um, we've got 88 guests in total for that one. Yep, like that's pretty good, but you could fit so many people at Taman Bhagawan.

They can fit a couple thousand people.

Oh yeah, um, you've also got Wonderland, Uluwatu. They've got a really big lawn space. I think you had like 150 guests there once. I've got a big one coming up next year, my double wedding.

My double wedding. I have a 300-people wedding coming up at Pure Bhagawan.

Yep.

Or is it Taman Bhagawan? One of them. So There are other, obviously other venues as well, which are private event spaces. There's only a few of them. So, Kurri Bagwan, Taman Bagawan, New Kuta Golf.

Oh yeah, that's a good one.

We've got Wonderland. And then in my head I was like, there's that other venue as well. Tiatha, Tiatha Illawatu. That's a private event space. So it's purely just a venue built for weddings.

How many people can you fit at Tiatha though?

Depends where you do the ceremony. I'm doing one next year that we're doing on the glass stage, and I think about 110.

Wow.

So it does depend what area you're using. We've got the chapels obviously, but the chapel could only fit— I reckon 70 is a squish.

Yeah.

And you could obviously fit people outside, but you don't want to do that. Yeah.

I mean, we've done that so many times at Pyrie Temple Hill.

Yeah.

Um, wedding at the start of this year actually, we had a lot of people in that chapel area, but then we had access excess people outside just before the big walkway, which is lovely.

It's extending out there, but you still get to see the Bridal Walk. Now you can still see— that's one of the few venues I think that you can still see if you see the people outside. So let's just kind of list off— there's obviously hundreds of hotels in Bali. We don't recommend all of them, and that's because we tried and tested hotels, but also after a bit the hotels are repetitive, they're all very the same. So we look for the ones with the best service and the best amenities and the best I guess I'd probably say Sofitel's really nice as well. Yes, Sofitel's beautiful. So we kind of go by area. So beachfront hotels, I love Sofitel Nusa Dua.

Yep.

I also love that their ballroom there is lovely. So if you do want to—

it's probably the only nice ballroom that I've seen here.

I actually really like the one— there's another hotel out near Jeeva Saba, Rumah Lui. Oh, gorgeous. Their ballroom is stunning. I don't know that I'd work there, okay? Oh. Very get up to the local market, right? Ran out of alcohol at a wedding. Like, there was a lot of just things, even though I went out there multiple times in advance, like, that just went wrong. And again, it's like controlling the hotel stuff. That's why, yeah, it can be very hard because even though, yes, we're the planners and we're in charge of your day, like, I can't force someone to, yeah, do their job properly. Like, it's a little bit tricky. Like, it's not like I can fire them, so there's no risk for them. It's like, well, we ran out of alcohol. Well, I told you 50 times that our guests are heavy drinkers and to be stopped. So yeah, Softail Love, Noosadour Beach Hotel. We do a lot of weddings there, and it is— we love that venue. It's beautiful. The beaches are nice. The staff are wonderful, very flexible. Can't really go wrong. And in Noosadour, there's a lot of hotels, but we do just pick the tried and tested ones.

Yeah.

Mooloolaba, really lovely as well. Got some nice chapels.

Still haven't been there.

Um, I did a wedding there a couple of weeks ago.

Beautiful.

Um, the staff were actually fantastic. Like, I can't fault the staff. The only— a lot of rules Yeah, the only thing there is there's a lot of rules and a lot of suppliers don't want to work there because of a lot of rules. So you might be stuck with more expensive suppliers because they don't want to work there. And we'll touch on that more in another episode when it comes to things like, well, why is the lighting $3,000 when you quoted me $1,000? Because every $1,000 company will not work there. Yeah. So Morley is really lovely out there. Um, what's that? Kaya Manis next door to Noosa Beach Hotel, also beautiful. They've got kind of a mix out the back of the jungle, um, and then at the front, the beach. So that's kind of Nusa Dua. Around this way we've got Bali Mandira, Bali Mandira.

We've got—

I think one of them's undergoing renovations, can't remember what. Yeah, but the team don't want us promoting those venues right now. I think there's been a lot of staffing changes, and again, it's very difficult to work there right now. Like, when you're having to follow up a venue like 12 times for one thing It's not like we're saying we don't want to work at these hotels. Like, we're trying.

We try.

Again, the blame falls back on us. Well, the wedding planner hasn't come back to me. That's because the venue hasn't. Like, I can't force them to reply to their email.

Still waiting.

And I think I told you I had a meeting a few weeks ago with a hotel in this area, and I didn't need a meeting. It was a complete waste of my day.

Yeah.

But I went out of my way, went out there for a meeting, walked in, and the person I was meeting with was running a bit late, and the manager came out to greet Oh my gosh, Tristan, Bali Brides, we'd love to work with you more. How do we work with you more? And I was like, well, you can get your staff to answer your emails so I don't have to waste my day coming out for a meeting. Yeah. And she was quite taken aback. And I was like, I don't need to be here, but I had to show up face to face because you're not replying. And that meeting, oh my gosh, like it was painful. Simple question. And it's like they're talking amongst themselves in Indonesian. I'm like, guys, I can understand you. How do you not know the answer to this question? You're literally like, this is your venue. And they're having to run away and ask someone else. Yeah, I don't know how to explain to a client that these things are out of my control and it doesn't matter how hard I work for you, I can't force someone else to do their job better.

Yeah.

So I mean, in this area we've got a lot of beautiful hotels. I also really love Holiday Inn Toobahn. We've done a lot of weddings there. A lot of people don't like getting married there because of the name, like, oh, Holiday Inn sounds weird, but it's actually such a stunning venue. I'll some photos up here.

Beautiful sunset, stunning sunset, great lawn.

It's pretty private in regards to the way hotels are as well because of how big that lawn is, and they give us a whole section of it. Other parts of Bali, I mean, the other hotels that you're going to get in Uluwatu, they're a lot more pricey. Yeah, because you're more moving into the high-end clifftop villa hotels. So they're a hotel, but it's a private villa inside a hotel. So you've still got the resort amenities, but you've got a private space. In there.

Yeah.

What are some of your favorites?

One that you worked at recently was in Ubud.

Oh, that's, um, that's actually a villa.

Yeah, yeah. Um, beautiful.

We talked about it a lot, that Jackie and Carl's wedding.

Yeah, beautiful.

That's good. So again, that one is villas, but it's part of a resort, so they've got in-house amenities. But they were really good because we actually got to bring in all of our own things. So this is, I think, the other thing that planners love with villas. It's a blank slate. We can take in all of our suppliers. There's no restrictions there really, unless the supplier's been blacklisted, and it takes a lot for a supplier to be blacklisted.

Yeah, trauma stories, but yes, definitely trauma stories. Um, but yeah, hotels for me, I think I've, I've said it, Mandira is great. Noosa Dua Beach Hotel, fantastic. I'd really like to work at Sofitel I think there was a little bit of—

but we had 3 days worth of events to get there. But, um, again, the staffing, like, like, it's all— it all comes down to stuff. Yeah. Hotels, if you're listening to this, please like just work with the wedding planners. Like, we're not trying to make your life more difficult, but simple things are going at another wedding.

And sometimes they're just very simple questions and it takes weeks to get back to us.

Or like on the wedding day, it's like, hey, you've filled up a chapel full of chairs that I'm not using. You knew I was hiring chairs. Can we get rid of them?

Yeah.

No one moves. And it's like, my chairs are here, I want to load them in, can you get rid of them? And it's like an hour and a half and you're still— can you move the chairs for me?

Yeah.

Like, I don't know where they go, they don't belong to me. Can you bring your staff and get rid of them? So those are the kind of painful things that happen. And then I guess the most biggest cost factor that's going to be hotels versus villas is catering. And we did touch on this on our catering episode, so if you want to know more, please go and watch that episode on catering. Hotels, you got to use their catering. There's no flexibility. There's no free-flow bar packages at a reasonable price. You're locked in there. So there's not a lot of wiggle room for food and drinks. So that is the biggest part of your bill.

Yep.

Like, I don't think there's a hotel in Bali that we could get away with paying under $150 a head for food and drinks, whereas no, the cheaper catering companies, we might be able to pay $30 a head for food and a $25 soft drink package for 8 hours. So hotels are definitely more expensive food and beverage-wise. Yeah, amazing. Anything else to kind of touch on? Let's go through favorite villas. We've done—

I, uh, well, I guess it's kind of a resort as well, but the Ongasan. Ongasan, beautiful. Yeah, I just love everything about that place. Just—

you've got to put that into the hotel thing because it is— there's no flexibility for us.

It's true, you have to use their food and beverage.

One of our favorite hotels.

Hotels, that, that would 100% be number one, but Oh, it's pricey. Yeah, that one's quite pricey compared to the resorts in Nusa Dua and Seminyak.

I, for a hotel, I actually really love Badaran. Yeah, absolutely beautiful. It's very jungle vibes but not in Ubud, so you're not having to travel all the way out there and it's something different, multiple different spaces. And as far as hotels go, so private. Yeah, there are no other guests around when you're getting married in that venue. True. Um, the only thing I don't love about it from a personal point of view, like to plan a wedding, they love it, but I'm not a big jungle girl. I do love the beaches and I love those kind of things. So I'd say Noosa Door Beach Hotel's up there with one of my favorites. I really like that hotel. I loved Majoli when it was open. Oh yeah, Majoli, that was my favorite hotel to work at for many, many years.

That was one of my first weddings I did at Majoli.

Honestly, like pre-COVID. We did so many weddings, it was absolutely beautiful. I do think Nusa Dua Beach Hotel at the moment is probably my favorite. They're just really easy to work with, pretty flexible. The staff, I mean, you've still got to boss hotel staff around multiple times in the day to get things done, but that's just part of it, I guess.

Meta, if you're listening to this, please reply to my messages.

I have sent a few. We have sent a few. Um, we used to do a lot of weddings at Bali Garden Hotel as well, but that was when we were a lot more low budget, I guess you'd say. We were doing a lot of budget weddings, very budget friendly. If you're on a very strict budget, I highly recommend Bali Garden Hotel. It's lovely, but it is very public.

That is the first place I ever stayed at in Bali. My first ever trip before moving here. Stayed there for a week. It's lovely.

Yeah, it's lovely. Again, Holiday Inn. And then my favorite villas, I got to say, Pala Ubud now is very up there.

Yeah.

Again, I'm actually, I'm going to classify that as a villa because we took everything in.

True.

We didn't have to use any of their amenities apart from staying there. I love Pandora Cliff Estate.

Yeah, I like it for the multiple areas though.

I feel like if you're having multiple areas—

yes, I mean, I just had a wedding recently, we have to flip the whole ceremony into the reception. Like, it's doable, but it's a hard slog for us. Yeah, it's— we're restricted with time, we're restricted with space. Yeah, depending how many guests that you've got there, but Yeah, I, I mean, yeah, I, I love Pandawa Cliff Estate because you've got that front garden area and then you go down for your ceremony and then you can move next door for cocktail down the front and then your dinner up the back.

Like, love it.

I love a journey for your guests. I just love a journey.

I do love that as well. And I always love that about Kuri Bhagawan, which is a private event space. I love that they come in down that beautiful walkway and there. We'll put a photo. Yeah, walkway, bang, welcome area. And then depending on what level we use, there's a separate area for the ceremony, and then we move them into another area for dinner. I do love like the element of surprise.

Yeah.

And I think I also really love that about Wonderland Uluwatu is that it's different spaces and it's a wow factor. It's not like we've walked in and there's a ceremony and there's dinner, we've seen it all now. There's no more wow. I do love that. I actually really like Analea. Oh yeah, as well, for a villa.

Yep. Yeah, I like that one. It's, it's all very one space as well.

Not if you use the back garden.

Ah, see, yeah, I didn't use the back garden.

Yeah, so when we did Hayley and Diane's wedding many moons ago, we used the top space for the ceremony. Yeah, um, absolutely gorgeous. Then we moved around to the back garden and we did a flip for the reception. Nice. And honestly, like, they— Anna-Lia told me it was one of the prettiest weddings they've done. When everyone walked back out, it was like, wow, oh my gosh. Yeah, I completely transformed the space.

But that is cool.

Team that day to make that happen in the hour and a half.

I mean, yeah, my, my last one that I had at Pandawa Cliff Estate, same thing. Like, people like, whoa, like, how did it flip? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You didn't see the 50 people running around?

No, seriously, I think there was probably like 60 to 70 people, us, because we had all structures. Yeah, I will put photos. Yeah, um, of doing ceremony and then flipping it into the reception. But we had structures over every single table. They had chandeliers.

I don't think I've seen photos of this wedding yet. We've had such a busy couple of weeks, I haven't seen it.

But yeah, we had greenery structures over every single table. Well, there was 4 tables, but the bridal table was long.

Yeah.

Yeah, we had to do all the tablescaping and then get all the tables and chairs back into place.

And yeah, it's a lot of work behind the scenes.

I think you've got to I think we've said this before, dance floor and lighting, they just have to be in place.

Yeah, see, I had that wedding at BBG the other day and we had to set up the lighting because it was 150 people almost. Yeah, the lighting had to be up. Yeah, there was like—

there's nothing we can do about it.

That whole space, like, the lighting had to be up. You can't install lighting in like an hour and yeah, it's an all-day project.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, so just recapping, I guess, on today's episode: hotels, definitely a lot of pros and cons there. Same with the villas. I mean, it's going to come down to budget. If you are on a lower budget, definitely explore your hotels more than anything. If you've got the money to spend and, or maybe your family are contributing and they're paying for their rooms, villa. But if you are the kind of person that wants a lot of flexibility and to be able to choose your own suppliers, 100% go for a villa. If it's more family orientated, if you want everyone to stay and have the experience, I think a hotel.

Yeah. And you got kids.

And you got kids and you want to do all the activities and explore and have a whole holiday. About it rather than traveling around.

Yeah.

So yeah, anyway, I hope that was a little bit insightful. Just a short episode today to kind of touch on that. On our next episode, we will be running over our monthly recap, and gosh, everything that has been happening in the last month and a half, 2 months, and I can tell you it has been a wild ride. There is a lot of tea. So stay tuned and we'll see you next time on another episode of Bali Weddings Unveiled. Bye! Bye!